Michael Moore led hundreds of people from the Left Forum conference to Zuccotti Park on Saturday where hundreds had gathered to reoccupy the park to mark six months since the launch of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began last September and launched protests around the world that gave voice to "the 99 percent." That night, New York City police officers cleared the park, making at least 73 arrests. Many people reported...

A New York City corruption case exposed by Democracy Now! co-host Juan González has led to a major fine for the main contractor involved. Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) has agreed to pay $500 million in penalties for the scandal surrounding the computerized payroll system called CityTime. In what prosecutors call "the single biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the city of New York," SAIC employees and other...

As students across the country stage a National Day of Action to Defend Public Education, we look at the nation’s largest school systems—Chicago and New York City—and the push to preserve quality public education amidst new efforts to privatize schools and rate teachers based on test scores. In Chicago, the city’s unelected school board voted last week to shut down seven schools and fire all of the teachers at 10 other schools. In...

An Occupy Wall Street organizer in Brooklyn gave birth to a baby Tuesday night in a scene caught on videotape by her husband, another Occupy Wall Street activist. Beka Economopoulos and Jason Jones were preparing to host an Occupy video meeting at their home in Brooklyn when Economopoulos began having contractions. They soon jumped into a taxi, but only made it two blocks before Economopoulos gave birth in the backseat. The cab driver got out...

As the ranks of the uninsured continue to rise, a major new study has found that most New York medical centers are violating rules intended to help patients who are uninsured and cannot afford healthcare. Two-thirds of hospitals studied either violated the law, failed to comply with state guidelines or created additional barriers to financial assistance, despite receiving a combined total of more than $463 million from the state’s...

New York Daily News columnist and Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez reports the Treasury Department has approved payouts exceeding $5 million for 49 executives at firms that most benefited from the Wall Street bailout. The executives’ pay came despite the $500,000 salary cap established under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). [includes rush transcript]

Representatives from the New York City Muslim community, together with local ethnic and interfaith groups, gathered at City Hall Thursday calling for the resignation of New York City Police Department Commissioner Raymond Kelly and police spokesperson Paul Browne after it was revealed an anti-Muslim film, "The Third Jihad," was screened to nearly 1,500 officers during training. After initial denials, the NYPD admitted the officers...

Adding to a growing nationwide backlash against the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, California lawmakers have introduced a resolution that calls on Congress to "propose and send to the states for ratification a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United." The New York City Council has just passed a similar resolution, echoing measures passed in Los Angeles, Oakland, Albany and Boulder. We speak to Public...

The family of 19-year-old Danny Chen has demanded an investigation after the Army private was found dead in Afghanistan of what military authorities say was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Chen’s family says, before his death, he reported being subjected to racist hazing, with soldiers throwing rocks at him and calling him ethnic slurs. Now the Army has charged eight soldiers involved in his death with crimes ranging from...